1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for controlling interference between channels in a wireless communication system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a wireless communication system, a Transmission Point (TP), also known as a Base Station (BS), may determine a data transmission rate by estimating a state of a channel to a terminal, and transmit data to the terminal at the determined transmission rate. The TP may estimate the channel state based on channel information that the TP has directly estimated using the terminal's receiving channel information, which the TP has received from the terminal as a feedback, or using a signal received from the terminal.
When the TP estimates the channel state based on the receiving channel information fed back from the terminal, the receiving channel information may be received in periods that are determined according to a related standard of the communication system and its implementation. The TP may determine a transmission rate of the next transmission time for the terminal depending on the estimated channel state.
The receiving channel information may include information about the received signal strength from the serving TP, or information indicating the quality of the received signal, compared to that of ambient interference. The receiving channel information may be represented in, for example, Channel Quality Indexes (CQIs). The receiving channel information may represent the channel state at the time the terminal receives a related signal.
In the wireless communication system to which an interference control technique is applied, the channel state needs to be changed depending on whether an interference signal is controlled. Channel information between the terminal and its neighbor TPs needs to be used in order to estimate the changed channel state. However, there is a limit in acquiring the channel information due to the constraints of resources between the terminal and the neighbor TPs. This presents difficulties in estimating the accurate channel state.